Dundee certainly loves a ghost story, and, on November 14th, 1898, The Dundee Courier wrote an article concerning “Sensational Adventures in the West End”, featuring…you guessed it…another ghostly apparition. This time, however, it seems the ghost was a bit of a scaredy cat: “During the past few days a “ghost” has been monopolising attention at […]
19th century
William Bury
William Bury presented an alarming story concerning the death of his wife to local police in Dundee on 10th February 1889, but was he the infamous Jack the Ripper?
Springheels
In the latter part of 1882 and into the first few months of 1883, Dundee had a somewhat alarming visitor “…described as being rather tall, and is generally seen dressed in a long dark cloak, although occasionally he sometimes assumes a luminous appearance, supposed to be due to the inside of the cloak being lined […]
Hurkle Jean
Grissell Jaffray is undoubtedly the most famous witch of Dundee, having been the last witch to be executed in Dundee, but Dundee’s superstitious side was still alive and well in the 19th century, when Janet Kindy, or ‘Hurkle Jean’, was believed to be responsible for a number of afflictions that allegedly beset the town. Sickness […]
Dundee crime statistics 1898 – 1902
The following is a collection of extracts of Dundee Crime Statistics from the Dundee criminal returns of 1898 to 1902 inclusive, read, in part, by us on one of our forays in the archives. A very informative and insightful glimpse into the lives and crimes of this era, it’s also hard sometimes to see where […]
The Dundee Body Snatchers
In Dundee, body snatchers, graverobbers, or “Resurrection Men” turned over a considerable amount of business. When Cholera struck in 1832, the memories of Burke and Hare’s atrocities were still very much at the forefront of people’s minds. Even though Burke had been executed in 1829 (whilst Hare spent the rest of his years in relative […]
Hanging and execution in Dundee
273 people were publicly hanged in Scotland between 1800 and 1868. Of these 273, 14 were women. Few of them actually took place in Dundee, with only six recorded hangings, five of them public, the final one private. The last man to be hung in Dundee, William Bury, was the infamous murderer who was suspected […]
Dundee Poorhouses
In the mid-19th Century, help and support for the poor people of Scotland was, by today’s standards, pretty horrendous. The people demanded a change in the current law (the Poor Law of Scotland), and it was amended in August 1845 in an attempt to abolish the suffering caused by such a lack of care. Prior […]
On this day – 1861
On this day in 1861, newspaper ‘The Gleaner’ published a story about a Dundonian woman who visited Egpyt and was made an ‘interesting’ proposal! Read the story below to find out more. We wonder who this lady was? *** ***
Workers of the mills
Weaving was big business in Dundee as far back as the 16th century. After the Union with England in 1707 ended military hostilities, Dundee recovered from the devastation of the Siege of Dundee by General Monck in 1651 and established itself as an industrial and trading centre.